Six Christmases of Jessica Jones
by Jinxgirl
Summary: Six Christmases of Jessica Jones that she tries to forget, and one she can stand to remember.
1. Chapter 1

Even before he spoke she could feel the warmth of his Dorito breath, irritating the skin of her cheek as he leaned in close to her ear. Still mostly asleep, she started to twitch one hand in his approximated direction, intending to bat him away, but he was fully alert and far more persistent. He sucked in a breath, then delivered his message at full volume, less than two inches away from her ear.

"WAKE UP, FART FACE!"

Fourteen-year-old Jessica Jones jolted out of the last remaining dregs of the blissful unconsciousness of sleep, her fist shooting out in instinct at her very much unwanted intruder. But her brother was prepared and dodged out of her way, laughing gleefully at his foresight.

"Missed me, missed me, Jessie's slow as piss, me!"

"Get out of my room, dillhole!" Jessica ordered.

Her grogginess made the intended threat of her words sound more grouchy than intimidating as she pulled her blankets more securely over her head, blocking herself from further assault by her nine-year-old brother. But Phillip Jones was undeterred by a simple blanket barrier. He threw himself onto the bed beside her, bouncing himself up and down while still seated. Jessica growled beneath her blanket, aiming a kick towards him that only dislodged her foot out from the tangle of sheets and blankets. Seizing her ankle, Phillip shook it back and forth, then tickled the sole of her foot, managing to hold on as Jessica again tried to kick at him.

"Get up, Jess, Mom and Dad said!"

That was neither a convincing argument nor a believable one; typically, their parents wanted Phillip to give them some peace and quiet almost as much as Jessica did, and they were usually happy to let Jessica sleep in on their days off.

"Phillip, I said go away! Leave me alone!"

"Ohhh, I get it," Phillip drawled with fake realization brightening his words. "You want a special wake up call! No problem, sis, I've got one coming for you! Give me a second, it's coming right up!"

As he bounced himself off the bed and back to his feet, Jessica had no time to actually hope for possible truth to his words. She heard the rustle of adjusted clothing and with a bolt of horror, realized what it was that her brother was planning.

"Phillip Vincent Jones, don't you fucking dare-" she started, sitting up and punching the covers off her face, ready to punch him next if necessary.

But it was too late. Her brother was already standing next to her bedside, pants down, underwear thankfully still intact, but nevertheless bent over, backside aimed in her direction. With a loud cackle, he let loose with the loud and very obnoxious "special delivery" that seemed to be every nine-year-old boy's idea of utter hilarity.

"Merry Christmas, fart face!" he chirped between guffaws as he pulled his pants up and leapt out of swinging range of his sister's fists.

"Come here and say that, you little asshole!" Jessica snarled, but Phillip was a pest, not an idiot. He was already ten feet away, opening the door to her room as Jessica got to her feet.

"That's right, and my asshole just delivered your very first Christmas gift. You're welcome!"

Jessica lunged at him, but Phillip was already shooting through the doorway, slamming it loudly behind himself. She could hear him clomping through the hall and down the stairs, his voice distant as he called out to their parents.

"She's up!"

He was right about that much. Whether or not she liked it, Jessica was officially awake.

Releasing a growl of frustration, Jessica rolled her eyes to the ceiling, rubbing the palms of her hands over her face. Shoulders slouched, she trudged across the room to open her door again. It might be Christmas, but that didn't mean she enjoyed getting up any more than she did any other day. When was the brat going to realize sleep was something to enjoy instead of dodge at all costs?

She didn't bother to change out of the baggy black t-shirt and pajama pants she had worn to bed, nor to take the time to brush her teeth or run a comb through her tangled mane of hair. She knew her mother would probably comment sigh about that, and make a comment about how bad for her skin it was that she was also still sporting yesterday's smudged dark eyeliner and mascara, but Jessica was good at tuning out nagging at this point in her adolescence. They were lucky they still had a son with all his teeth and limbs intact; they were just going to have to take her as is.

But Jessica was greeted by soft, warm smiles and good morning wishes by her parents as she shuffled into the living room, with no comments made about her appearance or late arrival. They pointed towards her pile of gifts beside the tree, telling her to sit beside them, and Jessica complied, with only one punch to the shoulder towards her brother. Phillip, for his part, was too excited to hardly notice or care. Sitting on his haunches beside his own considerable stack of gifts, he bounced in excited anticipation, his face aglow with his smile.

"Finally, you take forever! Can we start now? Can we?"

At his parents' responding nod, Philip let out a whoop, tearing into his first gift with frenzied fingers. Jessica, beside him, took a gift into her hands far more slowly, but soon she too got caught up in the excitement of the moment, and as her stack of unwrapped gifts grew smaller and the mound of discarded paper grew taller, she too began to smile and exclaim with surprise and excitement.

It was always like this, once Christmas Day came. Even though Jessica was fourteen years old now, two years into being a teenager and far, far past any sort of belief in Santa, elves, or magic, somehow, a different sort of magic seemed to happen each year, all the same. Somehow once she was surrounded by the Christmas tree's twinkling lights and the circle of her family, for one day of the year actually together, smiling, and genuinely happy to be around each other, she could not help but get caught up in the hour or so of something near miraculous. Because that was what it was, each time, something close to a miracle for her parents to scrape up enough money for their gifts, without ever letting Jessica or Phillip see them wrapping or buying. But even more so, it was a miracle for them all to be in the same room, at the same time, with none of them arguing, angry, or wanting to be somewhere else.

So when the presents had all been unwrapped and Alisa Jones started to stuff the paper into trash bags for clean up, Jessica tolerated her father's affectionate squeeze around her shoulders and the kiss he pressed on top of her head, without grumbling or pulling away like she would any other day of the year. She only rolled her eyes and exhaled loudly at her mother's running her hand through her hair in an effort to tame its tangled waves, and when they cameras came out, she managed to grit her teeth and suffer, if not smile, through the pictures they insisted on taking of her and Phillip.

It wasn't a perfect day, of course. She and Phillip fought over the video game system they received, to the point that she hit him and got yelled at when he told on her. She didn't get any of the CDs she had wanted, because, as her mother informed her, they were supposedly "inappropriate" in their content. By noon, her parents were snapping at each other and yelling at her and Phillip just as much as usual, and by evening, Jessica was more than glad to shut herself up in her room like usual.

But although she knew this, years later, the memory of her fourteenth Christmas seemed somehow perfect nevertheless, sharper in its bittersweet poignancy and the never quite fading sharpness of her grief. Because back then, she could not have known it was the last Christmas with her family she would ever have, and therefore would become all the more precious yet painful in its every small detail.


	2. Chapter 2

Jessica Jones was the luckiest girl in the world. Ask anyone, and they would tell you. After all, she had survived an accident horrific enough that it had killed all three of the other car's occupants. She had come out of serious injuries and a coma fully healthy and healed, with a new, ready-made family already set up and ready to bring her into their home. Not only that, she had through absolutely no effort suddenly become the adoptive sister of one of the richest and most recognizable child stars of the decade. She was rich, semi-famous, and had access to the wealth and luxury most teenaged girls could only dream of. Everyone whom she came into contact with seemed to feel the same way- Jessica Jones had plenty to be grateful for.

Only Jessica herself would disagree. Because no one had bothered to ask her if being adopted, let alone rich and sort of, vaguely famous, was something she actually wanted, and she certainly wasn't given the option of refusing it once it all was set in motion for good.

It was expected that the injured, ordinary little orphan would only smile with awed, humble gratitude at her fortune to be adopted by the likes of Dorothy Walker, at becoming the new pseudo twin sister of her celebrity daughter Patsy. But no one ever seemed to acknowledge that it was difficult to feel anything but mind-numbing grief, guilt, and devastation at the loss of her parents and her little brother, and that she was expected to jump into accepting a new family she hadn't wanted without so much as an hour to process the one that no longer was. No one understood that she was simultaneously learning to accept and manage her sudden new skills of super strength and fall/flying, even as she was expected to keep it secret from a public that was far too interested in her new "family's" every move. And no one ever bothered to ask her if she even liked the people she was supposed to regard as her adoptive mother and sister, let alone loved them.

And she didn't. It was impossible to love a woman who commandeered every aspect of her daughter's life until the girl couldn't dress, eat, or speak without receiving explicit critiques and commands, and who expected Jessica to become her newest puppet on display. And her daughter, spoiled, prissy little singer/actress Patsy, was not much better.

Until the other girl started to grow on her, just a little bit. Until Jessica started to see her adopted sister as the Trish she was and wanted to be, instead of the Patsy that her mother had created, and until the girl's helplessness and pain at her mother's began to stir Jessica's anger and protective impulses more than her impatience and disgust. Until Jessica realized to her own surprise that she not only could tolerate Trish, for more than a couple of minutes at a time, she thought of Trish as her best friend- the only friend she actually had. Maybe, as much as she would never acknowledge it, she even sort of loved her, just a little.

Nevertheless, however much she had gotten used to Trish, and however much money Dorothy Walker was willing to flash in her direction, fifteen-year-old Jessica could not feel anything but grim resentment for her new life. And her first Christmas with the Walker family? God, she would rather have spent it under a bridge.

Even before the accident, Jessica had hardly been what anyone could call a social girl. She had no interests in joining clubs or sports, attending parties or football games, and the thought of talking to a cheerleader for more than twenty seconds made her bristle automatically. Most of her evenings were spent in her room, with her door firmly shut, blasting rock or metal music, and messing around on mom's hand me down laptop. Even her contact with her family was limited to what they dragged her into doing; the rest of the world was wholly undesirable to be around whenever she could avoid it.

But that was a life philosophy that the Walkers, at least Dorothy Walker, was firmly against and would not tolerate from Jessica, at least for her first Christmas with them. No, Christmas was to Dorothy an even great opportunity to show off to the world just how wonderful her daughter was and by extension, her supposedly loving and devoted mother, was. And that, of course, meant showing off just how generous they were to their brand new daughter/sister, Jessica, and how supposedly happy Jessica was in return.

In other words, Christmas was just an endless, extended photo shoot of the Walkers and Jessica, in every possible cheerful holiday setting that Dorothy come conjure up. It meant posing with Trish and often Dorothy too for staged family photos in front of fireplaces without real fires and mantels that were just backdrops, at studio sets that only had three walls to them and doing activities that they didn't actually experience. Jessica was dragged along to take pictures of herself with presents without actual gifts inside, opening actual gifts that weren't hers to keep, and supposedly engaging in eating Christmas cookies and drinking eggnog, going on horse-drawn carriage rides and ice skating, caroling and decorating a Christmas tree- all activities that were abruptly drawn to a close, without actually experiencing, the moment the cameras were shut off.

It was what Dorothy not only wanted but demanded, and apparently Trish knew no other way of life. But for Jessica, every single second of it was excruciating.

The worst of it was the week before Christmas, when they were shooting the Patsy Christmas special. Dorothy was almost manic with her determination that everything would be "perfect" for not only the show but also for any publicity associated with its airing. She had their house professionally decorated by paid interior designers, inside and out, with so many wreaths and lights Jessica swore she would develop epilepsy by the incessantly blinking mish-mash of color continually flashing in her view. She snapped at Jessica constantly for such sins as slouching or scowling, as though Jessica had any intention of altering posture and expression that at this point were nearly permanent.

But she was even harder on Trish. She couldn't force her to vomit anymore- Jessica made sure of that- but she could "encourage" her to lose weight by making relentless cutting remarks about Trish's body, holiday food, and the camera's ten added pounds until Trish bawled, and she could actively encourage Trish to seek out "diet pills" that Jessica was pretty sure were related to meth or speed more than any sort of actual diet. And she could force Trish to wear tiny little Mrs Claus or elf dresses that made Jessica think of creepy festish videos more than holiday festivity.

Jessica's fifteenth Christmas eve was not spent reading old poems or ancient sacred verses, watching a play in church, or even bickering with family while preparing for the next day's events. Instead, she posed for approximately the 780th family portrait, this one to be aired in People, apparently, along with an article entirely written and approved by Dorothy, about the love and gratitude the three of them apparently felt during the holiday season. Jessica didn't even want to know what words the woman had put by her name- she had a feeling she would find it hard to keep from suffocating her in her sleep if she took the time to find out.

She was wearing, of course, a prim, girly, and obviously Dorothy- selected outfit for this final photo that with her other family, she would have refused to wear even if the only other option of dress was wearing only her underwear. Dorothy might be able to threaten her into the clothes, but Jessica took pride that in each of the photo shoots she had suffered through, the woman had been unable to make her change her own way of doing makeup or fix her hair, and she certainly couldn't make her smile. She hadn't seen the pictures yet, but Jessica took secret satisfaction in knowing that in each and every one, next to Trish and Dorothy's fake, beaming smiles, perfectly coiffed hair, and the smooth finish of their foundation, Jessica remained thin lipped, limp haired, and deathly pale, the only color in her face the black rings of her eyeliner. She looked like a teenaged Wednesday Addams standing next to an upscale single parent and child version of the Brady Bunch.

At least no one was stupid enough anymore to actually try to interview Jessica. There had been too much embarrassment on Dorothy's part with that, and at least three reporters with broken cameras or mics. It was hardly any wonder that the woman had taken to writing her own scripts.

Beside Trish, Dorothy's wide smile was accompanied by directives and insults to the girls, particularly Trish, hissed out between her teeth. Trish, as always the center of focus in between them, twitched and fidgeted until Dorothy's sharp pinches or pokes straightened her posture and re-intensified the exuberance of her expression. Jessica shifted her gaze to her frequently, noting with a critical eye all the indications of exhaustion and strain that Trish tried so valiantly to conceal.

She did a good job of it, most of the time. It was just that Jessica was beginning to know her well enough from their forced proximity and her own insight to see how heavily she had applied her makeup, in effort to hide the dark circles beneath her eyes and the sharp angles of her cheekbones. She noticed too how Trish's smiles never met her eyes, how her acting talent was not enough to convince Jessica, even if she could satisfy everyone else. Watching her, Jessica wondered if anyone other than herself noticed how much more lit up and alive, how much more truly pretty Trish was when her laughter and smiles were spontaneous and genuine rather than something performed on command.

She noticed too how stiffly Trish stood, how she leaned slightly away from her mother's body, so she was bordering on invading Jessica's personal space in her effort not to touch Dorothy more than was necessary. Jessica tolerated her closeness, gritted her teeth against her occasional brushing of limbs, because she understood all too well why Trish avoided her mother's touch.

That evening, when all the photographers, reporters, and publicists had left, Dorothy took out her frustrations on Trish as usual, although her abuse now was restricted solely to verbal rather than physical. Trish yelled back, her voice shrill, hurt, and choked with desperate need for approval, even as she attempted to defend herself against her mother's castigations. Jessica, superfluous, forgotten, lay on her back in her bed, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for their screams to stop. She couldn't decide if she was hoping or not that Dorothy would cross the line enough with Trish to justify Jessica stepping in. Sometimes, having someone or something to hit on just felt good, but sometimes, it only made everything feel that much more shitty.

She heard Trish crying later that night, long after the arguing had ceased and Dorothy's bedroom lights had gone out. From the other side of her wall, Jessica wrestled between equally strong impulses to go to Trish in awkward, likely failed efforts to comfort or to punch her own walls in frustration at her temptation to join her in tears. She felt the desire to smooth back her hair and tell her it would be okay, even as she also fought back the urge to scream at Trish to shut up. As bad as Dorothy was- and Jessica hated that woman even more than she sometimes hated herself- she was still there to hate. How could Trish think she knew what a miserable Christmas was, when Jessica had no mother at Christmas at all?

When the morning came, regardless of the two hours of sleep she had managed to snatch, Jessica was drawn into what seemed like a million more photos, hours before any presents were even opened. She sat stiffly in front of the Walkers' brightly lit tree, nauseous with the steady pounding of her sleep-deprived brain, muscles rigid with pain and rage at the unfairness of it all. She dragged herself through Trish opening expensive clothes, hair products, and makeup, each present tied in strictly to maintaining her celebrity appearance rather than aimed at anything to do with her personality, personal preferences, or what she might enjoy. Worse, her own gifts turned out to be exact copies of Trish's- all items that, though clearly of good quality and value, were nothing she would ever have wanted or chosen at all. She stared down at the mountains of torn wrapping papers, hands clinched around her own wrists as she calculated estimates of just how much all of the unwanted presents for her and Trish must have cost, and just what the Jones family could have done with it instead. Could it have paid several months of her parents' mortgage? Could they have used it on a vacation, or even a new car? How much more happy could they have been, using what Dorothy had so casually wasted?

They attended three separate celebrity "events," as Dorothy called them, throughout the day, each one more torturously inane to Jessica than the last. During the third, both she and Trish snuck spiked eggnog and champagne, making a game of who could drink more without Dorothy or any other adults noticing. Trish had Jessica down by two before Dorothy noticed her reddened complexion, Jessica's loose, dopey smile, and the unsteadiness of their movements. When she made her polite excuses and took them both home, hissing outrage and threats all the way out to their chauffeured ride, Jessica took the opportunity to flip her off when only Trish could see, taking pleasure from the other girl's erupting into a storm of giggles that only enraged her mother that much more. For once, Trish didn't seem to mind her mother's insults; she was too plastered to do anything but stumble along, snickering frequently and clutching Jessica's arm for balance.

That night, once more lying awake in her bed, Jessica felt her mind and body slowly shifting into a state uncomfortably in between sober and intoxicated. Her chest and lungs seemed short of all air, struggling to breathe through the heavy, uncompromising weight of her sadness, and she shoved her face hard into her pillow, forcing the tears that she came into near silence even as her body shuddered with the effort of suppressing her pain.

Trish could not have heard her; she must have come to Jessica of her own accord, still drunk and clingy in the aftermath of her night. When the bed dipped with her slight weight beside Jessica and she put tentative but earnest arms around her, Jessica tensed, but didn't push back or snap against the tenderness of her touch. She let Trish's clumsy fingers stroke through her hair, let her lean in close to murmur soothing, slurred words with warm alcohol-laced breath, and she allowed her to stay, just for that night. When Jessica's tears had slowed to almost stopping and she felt Trish's breathing even out into the steady pattern of sleep, she closed her eyes, letting Trish stay in her bed, letting her fall asleep with her, still draped across her back.

She let her stay, for the first time, making an exception for Trish that she would not have made for anyone else. With everything else of her world destroyed, Jessica fell into sleep, letting just one relationship begin to grow in silent mutual comfort.


	3. Chapter 3

Jessica's first Christmas without Dorothy's presence, three years after her adoption, was an exceptional one, a day she wouldn't easily forget. But it stood out in her memory not because of its celebratory or dramatic nature, but simply because it was the first year the day passed without any celebration at all.

Never having been anything close to a socially outgoing person even before her family's deaths, Jessica had dated few people in her first semester of college and had deliberately made no effort at making friends. Friendship belonged to people who liked people, and that was not a descriptive category she fit into. The thought of living in a dorm and sharing long term breathing space with a total stranger had practically given her hives, so she had been relieved when Trish offered up the thought of them sharing an apartment for the time that Jessica was attending school and Trish was struggling to "find herself" in her new in-limbo status as a now adult child star.

Their apartment, given Trish's funds and the living arrangements she was accustomed to, was comfortable and well furnished, but none of its adornments in Jessica and Trish's first Christmas in it included those reminiscent of the holiday. They set up no colored lights or plastic snowmen, no creepy elf toys or wreaths, and no tree was killed and then trussed up with ornaments on their behalf. Both wanted to remain in firm, deliberate denial against Christmas and all its trappings in the familiar semi-comfort of their home, although their reasons for their anti-Christmas stance were somewhat dissimilar.

For Jessica, the holidays were a bitter reminder of the family she had lost. As dorky and sometimes annoying as she had found it to be as a teenager, her parents had always made a big deal out of Christmas, decorating the house, playing music in the car on family trips, and taking both Jessica and Phillip for pictures with the apathetic Santas at the local mall. She bristled against any reminders of those memories, so strongly associated with people she could never see again and a time in her life long gone. Christmas could not feel the same to her now as it had even at her most cynical teenaged self, and so she would rather swerve around it entirely when possible.

For Trish, painful Christmas memories were not due to lost positive associations. As a young child, Trish had confided to her, she remembered Christmases where she would lie in bed, hands over her ears, trying not to listen to her parents scream at each other and the unmistakable thwack of her father's hand against some part of her mother's body. There had been times her presents had clearly been from the dollar store and even so, they had been short on food for the rest of the week due to Dorothy's efforts at giving her daughter something to show for the holiday. Later, Christmases for Trish had become nothing but daylong photo ops, a day lacking true meaning and emotion in which she was supposed to feign an abundance. She too had declared the need for a break, and the fact that she had chosen not to speak to her mother at all for the past two weeks and had lost out on yet another part she auditioned for may have had a lot to do with the decision as well.

So the year of their eighteenth Christmas, Jessica and Trish woke up closer to the side of pm than am, brewed a pot of coffee, and sat together in companionable near silence, broken with little more than steady sips. Both young women were clad in sweatshirts and baggy sleep pants, hair unbrushed, faces clean of makeup, and made no move to change their attire. There was no reason to, when they were expecting no company and had no plans to leave the apartment.

Dorothy called, of course. Not the landline; Trish had been firm on not giving her that number nor their address, but she did still know her cell number and made good use of that knowledge to fill her daughter's voicemail with her steadily more emotional messages. Trish turned off her ringer and let the calls roll through unanswered. When Dorothy called for the sixth time, Trish turned the phone off entirely, sighed, and then propped her feet up on the couch's arm rest, lay her head in Jessica's lap, and turned the TV to one of the few channels not showing Christmas specials.

They didn't talk about Trish's recent lack of real work, or about Jessica's barely passing grades and recent increase in absences. Jessica didn't ask Trish if she had been turning back to drugs or thinking about it, and Trish didn't mention the increasing amount of alcohol turning up in their fridge. They endured the day together, breathing inner sighs of relief when the hours finally passed and some level of emotional normality could resume.


	4. Chapter 4

Jessica's first Christmas with Kilgrave was unlike any holiday she'd ever encountered before.

Not even living with the child star that was Patsy Walker had exposed her to the level of lavish self-indulgence that Kilgrave was capable of conjuring up. Even Trish, with her fame-hungry mother and entourage of paparazzi pals, had not celebrated a literal twelve days of Christmas, stretching from December 13 until the traditional 25. And no one who was sane- Kilgrave clearly not being one of those- would ever try to replicate the literal gifts given in the song, just for his own amusement.

But Kilgrave being Kilgrave, that was precisely what he did. What he thought Jessica would do with a menagerie of laying geese, swimming swans, and various other animals, along with a parade of Kilgrave-influenced men and women drumming, milking, leaping, dancing, and piping, was beyond her, and besides the point. Once Kilgrave had his fill of amusement, he simply ordered them all away. Jessica supposed, even in her bewitched, inwardly frozen state, that she should just be glad he hadn't ordered someone to kill them all to be rid of them. It would hardly be beyond his capability.

The re-enactment of an ancient, nonsensical song was just the start of Kilgrave's idea of holiday celebration. There were the men and women he ordered to deliver expensive decorations and set them up throughout the house he had ordered theirs to stay in, the five Christmas trees, decorated in different themes to his specifications, and the continual presence of live choirs, singing carols throughout the day until they passed out from exhaustion or hunger. There were feasts containing foods Jessica had never eaten and heard of only in old Christmas movies or songs, such as figgy pudding (which was disgusting, as it turned out) and plum and mince pies, all, of course, prepared by the involuntary servants continually present in their stolen temporary home.

And as for Jessica? Even without the daily onslaughter of unwanted gifts of humans and non domesticated animals, she was propelled by Kilgrave to attend Christmas ballets and musicals, to go ice skating and on a horse-drawn carriage ride, all activities Kilgrave clearly saw as romantic and essential to experience in the holiday season. In addition to the more whimsical gifts, she was given jewelry and perfume, regardless of the fact that she neither liked nor wore those sorts of adornments before her capture. She was gifted dresses she hated and lingerie that made her look and feel like a hooker, if an expensive one. And through it all, she was made to smile, made to gush her appreciation and pleasure, all because Kilgrave believed that this was how she should respond….because it was what he wanted.

She had no other option; long ago, Jessica had grown to understand she could not fight. But each time that Kilgrave assured her how much she loved for him to spoil her so, each time that he announced his love for her and reminded her that she loved him too, she heard her own voice speak words she screamed protest against deep down inside, even as she simultaneously felt the very feelings he was forcing her to feel. Each time she smiled up at him in manufactured love and gratitude, she felt another piece of her true self, her true thoughts and feelings, wither and die just a little more, her inner screams of protest growing that much more dim in her despair.


	5. Chapter 5

The first Christmas after her escape from Kilgrave, Jessica had every intention of deadening herself to the world through sleep and booze.

Even before the guy she only somewhat sarcastically sometimes referred to as the Purple Man, Jessica had never exactly come down with a case of the holiday spirit. She didn't buy anything that could be looked at as décor for her office/apartment, she worked through the holiday if at all possible on whatever case she was on at the time, and she stringently avoided anything that could be considered a party in even the loosest of associations. Her wardrobe did not deviate from its basic black, white, and navy color scheme simply because the calendar read December, and she bought gifts only for Trish, and only because she felt like a complete asshole if she didn't at least give some limp gesture of reciprocity in return for what Trish would spend on her. She was a modern day Grinch and Scrooge rolled in one, according to Trish, and unlike them, had no interest in receiving an attitude adjustment.

After Kilgrave, Jessica's usual misanthropy only intensified. Four months after she stumbled her way to freedom, the glowing faces, blinking lights, and aggressive cheerfulness of everything and everyone she came across felt like a deliberate assault.

Christmas Eve, she didn't go to bed so much as she passed out, drunk enough that when she woke up some ten hours later, she was still drunk rather than hung over. She woke up only because Trish's irritating, insistent pounding on her already broken door didn't show any signs of stopping until she dragged herself up to address her presence in Jessica's apartment hall.

Her best friend/adoptive sister's effort at forcing Jessica into something resembling a celebration, or at the very least an acknowledgment of the world existing around her, was doomed to failure from the start. Jessica's determination to remain alone and oblivious was much stronger than Trish's determination to coax her into being in her company, and for a woman as fiercely focused as Trish normally was, that was saying something. Ten minutes, several slurred and nearly incoherent insults and refusals from Jessica and a final long-suffering sigh from Trish later, Jessica was left alone once more. There had been something from Trish about calling or texting or some method of communication with her, but Jessica forgot it as soon as the words were spoken. The only thing she desired to be in contact with was as much whiskey and vodka as her liver was capable of processing, or maybe more.

Problem was, once Trish had dragged her into the land of the waking, Jessica couldn't get back to sleep. She would have started in on whatever alcohol she had in the house, just to insure any thoughts or memories that tried to intrude would keep their unwanted existence far away, except she had already finished everything in the apartment the night before. And with an inability to sleep, and all stores closed on the one damn day of the year Jessica needed most for them to be open and accessible, that left her one option.

Bars could always be counted on to be open when needed, even on Christmas Day. For pathetic, sad sack assholes like Jessica, they tended to be more accessible and reliable than anything else in their erratic lives.

So that was how Jessica spent her first Christmas post Kilgrave- making her way from bar to bar, leaving out from one only when forcibly ejected. It took more than usual to make that happen; it seemed that on Christmas, at least, whatever sons of bitches unlucky enough to have to work were a lot more willing to let bad behavior slide. Jessica couldn't tell if the leniency was for the patron's sakes, out of kindness or pity, or for their own out of simple, lazy wish not to have to do anything more than absolutely necessary while working the worst day shift of the year.

By early evening, just as the sun began to creep its way out of sight, Jessica was almost too plastered to walk and had already been in enough fights, both verbal and physical, to have lost count of total number. She wouldn't remember later the final ejection of the night, her vehement and aggressive refusal to accept the cap ride home that the bartender had offered to get for her, or how long she staggered through the city streets, almost completely unaware of her surroundings. Neither did she remember how it was she had ended up at Trish's address, or how many clumsy efforts it had taken on her part before she was able to successfully jump up to Trish's balcony and knock on her window for her to let her in.

When she awoke in the early first hours of December 26, she was lying on her side on Trish's couch, a trash can resting near her head on the floor. She was wrapped in a blanket, her head propped up slightly on a pillow, and her shoes had been removed along with her jacket and jeans, neatly folded in a pile nearby. As Jessica squinted, trying to make sense of her surroundings through the nearly blinding migraine already slamming full force through her skull, she saw that Trish was dozing across from her curled up on her loveseat. The blonde stirred when Jessica made an effort to sit up, rubbing her hand across her eyes and looking Jessica over with concern, frustration, and love warring equally to take over dominance in her eyes.

"I didn't want to leave you alone with you that out of it," she murmured, by way of explanation of her presence nearby. "Jess…you really can't…"

She stopped, seeming to think better of finishing the sentence, and just sighed, getting to her feet and pressing a light hand against the still silent Jessica's forehead, like a mother checking her child for fever. Thinning her lips, she sighed, running her fingers quickly and very gently through Jessica's tangled hair before stepping back.

"I'll get you some Motrin. With water and coffee."

"Don't forget the whiskey," Jessica muttered, serious about the request.

She chose to ignore the irritated disbelief Trish cast her way as the other woman disappeared into her kitchen, emerging several minutes later with the items she had promised. But although Trish said something about safety and health and therapy, all topics Jessica had no desire at all to hear about or rehash with her, she didn't fail to notice that her sister had also silently placed a bottle of whiskey beside the medicine and non alcoholic drinks.

"It's over, Jess," Trish murmured to her as Jessica settled back several minutes later, having ignored the water and coffee in favor of the booze. "You're safe now. You're free. I wish…"

She didn't finish the sentence, but there was no need for her to. Jessica knew what she was thinking, and she judged herself all the more harshly because she thought the same damn thing. But even though Kilgrave was dead via humongous vehicle, even though she knew that made her physically safe and free, mentally, emotionally, it made no difference to her at all.


	6. Chapter 6

The first Christmas after Kilgrave's death- for real, this time- Trish tried to make Jessica spend Christmas Eve at her house.

This, of course, was not something Jessica wanted to do. She gave Trish every excuse in the book there was, but in the end the woman showed up at her apartment door, struggling to balance a huge box in her arms. Any hopes Jessica might have had about it being full of alcoholic beverages was dashed when she opened it to reveal fake garlands, wreaths, and other Christmasy decorative crap that Jessica had avoided having in her living space for the past fifteen years, minus the eight months with Kilgrave.

"No, no, and hell fucking no," she sputtered protest as Trish began to place random greenery on the dusty surfaces of Jessica's shelves, desk, and radiator. "Get that shit out of my house, PATSY!"

"I brought whiskey too," Trish informed her, not pausing in her efforts. Even then, Jessica had to check the box for herself, and only noticing the very vintage label on the first bottle inspected shifted her attitude- very, very slightly.

"What the fuck, okay. But I didn't get you anything, and don't expect me to share my booze."

"Oh, don't worry, your cheery presence is gift enough for me," Trish said with enough sarcasm to her tone to make Jessica almost smile. "I'm guessing you don't have food, either, which is why I brought takeout."

Chinese, of course, the one type of food readily available on Christmas Eve. Jessica wasn't complaining, because egg rolls were one of the few things she could eat even when hungover.

The two women sat in companionable silence on Jessica's couch, eating their food and sharing some of Trish's alcoholic bounty- despite Jessica's declaration otherwise, she did allow Trish to sample some of the goods. To her own surprise, Jessica found herself eating a larger quantity of beef and broccoli, rice, and egg rolls in a single sitting than she had eaten in entirety in the past several days.

Her stomach full but not yet uncomfortable, she sat back, bottle in hand, and watched with only slightly curiosity as Trish put away the containers and knelt back on the floor, digging through the apparently not yet empty box she had brought in. She emerged with her hands balancing a stack of DVDs, spreading them out on the coffee table as Jessica arched an eyebrow.

"Not that I have much room to say anything since I didn't buy a thing, but for a woman rich as you, your gifts look suspiciously unwrapped and not exactly new. And I don't just mean used, those movies are all about fifteen years old."

"Exactly," Trish returned, smiling. "Didn't you notice a little more to that theme? Every single one of these are movies we used to watch together, when we were teenagers."

Jessica's brow furrowed as she scanned the DVD covers more closely. Trish was right, now that she stopped to think about each of the titles displayed. Each of them were something they had watched together in what seemed like two or three life times ago, either laying back against the headboard of Trish's bed or while they were still playing in the theaters. But how Trish remembered that, especially given the amount of drugs she had taken since then, was kind of impressive to her.

"Okay, and?"

"And we're having a retro, flashback movie night together," Trish announced. Sitting beside Jessica on the couch, she gestured towards them, giving her a smile. "Your pick first."

"Hold on, I put up with the plant shit because you brought food and alcohol," Jessica grumbled protest, rolling her eyes. "I didn't say anything about taking a walk down Lame, Sentimental Lane."

"No sentiment needed. We can just watch without talking, or we can make fun of all the bad special effects and early 2000s fashion," Trish shrugged. When Jessica scowled at her, she threw in the winning point of the night. "Your other option is watching nothing but the Christmas specials that TV is about to be playing for the next 24 hours. I figured you'd pick a movie, but maybe I was wrong."

She wasn't. Just to spite her, Jessica picked a nineties horror movie that had scared Trish so badly the first time they watched it, as sixteen-year-olds, that she snuck into Jessica's bed later that night, too anxious to stay in her room alone. To her disappointment, Trish didn't scream or verbally freak out over it this time around, but she did notice her shift closer to her at the scary parts, her body tense.

They made it through almost four movies before Jessica's eyelids drooped, her chin dropping towards her chest. Normally, sleep came to her only after drinking herself to near unconsciousness or after several days of insomnia finally resulting in a crash, but it seemed easier for her to give in to sleep when Trish was around. They had watched the movies without much talking, as Trish had promised, and she hadn't said anything about Jessica drinking or tried to otherwise engage her. It hadn't been as awful as Jessica might have thought. It was weirdly sort of nice, actually, almost comforting.

When Jessica stirred back awake in response to Trish turning the TV off and dimming the room's lights, she shuffled towards the door automatically, assuming that Trish was about to head back to her apartment for the night. But Trish stopped her with a gentle hand to her shoulder.

"I thought I'd stay over, if you don't mind."

She hadn't bothered to ask Jessica's permission for anything else she'd sprung on her over the course of the night, so Jessica wasn't sure why she bothered to ask permission then. But she shrugged her assent, stepping back from the door again.

"Yeah, okay. Extra blankets in the storage closet."

She turned towards her bedroom, but Trish's cool hand reached out to take hold of her wrist, stopping her again.

"Your bed's big enough to share, isn't it?"

It wasn't as though they hadn't shared a bed together dozens of times before, maybe hundreds, since their teen years. But it was rare enough over the past few years- hadn't occurred at all, since Kilgrave's death- that Jessica paused, avoiding Trish's eyes. She wasn't sure she wanted to see any feelings of possible pity might lay at their surface.

"We don't have to," Trish said quietly, her voice careful, if not quite gentle. "I just thought…"

She didn't finish explaining what she had thought, and Jessica wasn't sure she could fully guess. It didn't matter. The idea of sharing proximity to someone for just a little bit longer, even if it was just Trish- maybe especially if it was Trish- was just appealing enough that she gave a jerky nod, not allowing herself to further analyze why.

"Whatever, knock yourself out. Fair warning, I haven't changed my sheets in about three months, and they're probably about a thousand thread counts less than you're used to, so your princess ass might wake up covered with hives tomorrow."

She and Trish shed their clothes, with Jessica throwing her a baggy t-shirt and sweats to sleep in and choosing just a loose shirt for herself, and then settled under the blankets together. They didn't cuddle, or even speak for some time, but after several minutes Trish fumbled for her beneath the blanket, finally coming into contact with her wrist. Lightly resting her hand on it, feeling the thready beat of Jessica's pulse, she whispered to her in the dark.

"Good night, Jess."

She didn't say anything about a merry Christmas, or any sort of celebration the following day. Jessica didn't ask, or even say anything back to her. But she breathed out only a little unevenly, and when Trish's hand slid down from her wrist to twine her fingers in Jessica's, she let her take her hand as she closed her eyes.

Christmas was never going to be something Jessica enjoyed, at least not in the context of most. But this year, it was becoming easier to survive.

End


End file.
